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The Department of Veterans Affairs hopes its new Acceptable Clinical Evidence program will help it reach the goal of eliminating the current disability claims backlog and decrease the amount of time for future processing. The ACE program allows for speedier processing by eliminating the need for some veterans to travel to VA facilities for assessments, relying instead on information already in the individual's medical records, supplemented by a telephone interview. A pilot run for the program found that 38% of the claims submitted could be processed using ACE.

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The Department of Veterans Affairs says its backlog of disability claims has shrunk a great deal, reaching its lowest level in six years. About 75,000 cases are yet to be handled, down 88% from the highest level of 612,000 cases in 2013. "While complete elimination of the backlog may not be achievable under our current processing systems and procedures, we know there is still more that we can do," the VA said.

The Department of Veterans Affairs will use evidence at hand to make provisional decisions for veterans who have waited the longest on disability claims. The VA continues to face criticism over the length of time associated with claims processing and a backlog of nearly 900,000 cases that includes 250,000 claims over a year old.

The Department of Veterans Affairs has embarked on a campaign to demonstrate progress in tackling its troubled disability claims system, noting the agency has processed more than 4 million claims in four years. The VA has increased the number of claims by changing rules on PTSD diagnoses, adding nine qualifying presumptive diseases for Gulf War veterans, expanding benefits for Vietnam veterans exposed to Agent Orange and launching an outreach program to help veterans apply for benefits.

The Department of Veterans Affairs may not meet its goal to eliminate the disability claims backlog by 2015 even though the department processes claims better than it once did, according to the Government Accountability Office. Since September 2009, the number of claims in the backlog has more than tripled as the VA has had to contend with an increase in the number of claims submitted, according to the GAO's Daniel Bertoni.

Veterans Affairs officials say the department has made significant progress on reducing the backlog of disability claims, cutting the number of unprocessed claims from 1.4 million in 2011 to around 911,000 now. Veterans advocates say the backlogs are caused by inefficiencies in using paper records and mistakes made during the initial submission, and they, as well as some legislators, want a reform of the entire claims process.